CHAPTER EIGHT

The Nightmare

Smack! Scrape! The noise woke Taryn from deep comforting sleep to wide wakefulness in seconds. She blinked in the dark, disoriented for a moment. A whimper snapped her gaze to the mattress next to her and the writhing black mass on it.

"...No!...I won't...Nightshade." Sylvie's hoarse whisper barely sounded in the dark, even to Taryn's sharp hearing. So quiet, she could barely make out her last word: "suffering".

Lurching to her feet she let the blanket fall from limp hands. Slipping silently to Sylvie's side, she dropped to her knees and tenderly took her head in her arms. For a moment, she lay in Nightshade's comfortable trailer, cradling her friend when she had nightmares in Nightshade's Circus and they both held each other until they fell asleep.

Whether it was the comfort of memory or the comfort of feeling someone close by, Sylvie's breathing steadied and her twitching subsided.

Her own tension ebbing, Taryn felt her thoughts slowed and became clearer, her muscles relaxing as tension released its grip. Taryn felt the blackness of sleep call her again, and she surrendered peacefully.

#

A ray of light in her eyes woke her and she sighed as her eyes fought the gum that held them together.

At last, the garage came into focus, the cobwebs falling from her brain. Taryn yawned as she stretched her back. Seeing Sylvie's head where she'd left it, Taryn carefully returned it to her pillow rather than embarrass her friend by admitting what had been done.

Soon they made a quick breakfast of oatmeal and orange juice before returning to the garage in the company of Taryn's mother.

Going to the back wall, she grabbed the hoof picks, chippers, file and brushes, as well as a short stool (there was no need for a bot-fly knife because of the frequent baths and sprays the girls used to rid themselves of the pests).

Taryn's mother sat on the stool while Taryn laid out the tools on a nearby table, by order of expected use.

"All right dear, how do you want to start, back feet first or front?" she asked.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd like to start with the back legs." Sylvie replied, positioning herself so she faced away from them.

"Okay." Taryn's mother smiled cheerfully. With easy grace, Sylvie lifted her right rear hoof up and laid it on her knee.

Grabbing the pick, Taryn passed it over to her mother who immediately started to clean out the small amounts of dirt and small bits of gravel that had stuck there. When it was over, she handed the pick back to Taryn who passed her the knife. Knife in hand, she trimmed the frog a tiny bit before passing the knife back and receiving the clippers. This wasn't an ordinary set of human clippers, but more like fingernail clippers crossed with bolt cutters. The heavy blades cut the edges of the hoof with a click and grunt of effort. Then came the file to even and smooth the hoof.

With a critical eye Taryn's mother studied her handiwork and had Sylvie place it on the ground. Apparently satisfied with her work, she scooted her chair and let Sylvie rest a moment before starting on her other feet.

When the last hoof had been finished, it was Taryn's turn. She grinned at her friend as she walked tentatively at first and then strode back to the table to help.

Once in position, Taryn leaned to one side to pick her rear leg up. At first it felt similar to holding a leg in midair, until her mother grabbed her leg and set the foot where she could work on it. While providing some stabilization, she still had to keep her weight off it, which tired her, like leaning against a wall for a long period without switching legs.

The actual work felt just the same as when Ted Grabluck, the circus farrier had done it: the pick in her hoof, like q-tips rubbing the tops of her fingernails, the almost complete lack of sensation when the knife did its job, hearing the click of the clippers and their slight tug on her leg, followed by the file, which actually felt like a human nail file in action, though the sizes were completely different, all brought to mind the peaceful tranquility of the farrier as he worked, never saying a word but never being cruel or heartless. He'd given her a chocolate bar the time she'd gone to see him, one of the first acts of kindness shone to her in her captivity.

The memory vanished soon, as she felt her mother continuing to work. Like then, there was the same feeling of peace, but unlike then, there was contentment and love. It...created a different atmosphere, she thought, one which was wholesome and pleasant then merely enjoyable.

"Thanks mom." She said when her last hoof was done. She reached for a broom to sweep up the pile of hoof bits and fine filings to throw them into the garbage.

"Yeah, thanks Mrs. Grogan." Sylvie chimed in.

"It was my pleasure hon. To be honest, I was afraid I'd be a little rusty, but it's like riding a bike; once learned it's not easily forgotten!"

They laughed at the joke, and then Taryn's mother turned to her. "Taryn, would you like to catch the soaps?"

"How 'bout it Sylvie?" Taryn asked. "We could see Jorgenson, or maybe Tom with his smoldering eyes?" she grinned.

Sylvie shook her head. "Actually, if you don't mind, I'd like to go to the range." She said quietly. "Albert doesn't mind me practicing there so..."

She shrugged and made a move to gather her stuff.  Taryn paused, thinking furiously.

"Oh!" she made her tone casual and chipper. "That sounds great, let me get my spear. I'll catch the episodes with you tomorrow, mom."

"All right dear. Just be careful out there." Her mom warned. She watched them leave the garage, and Taryn saw her go back slowly inside as they passed down the drive a few minutes later.

Cold crisp air bit their noses and harassed their ears as they walked. The sky looked clear and Taryn hoped the sun would warm the day up, but she didn't hold any hopes.

And to think it will be October tomorrow! We'll have been centaurs for almost a full year!

Taryn shook her head; it just didn't seem possible. She ran through the timeline in her mind; they'd been changed into centaurs three days before Halloween, participated in the school Halloween party, went to Ben's parents farm a week after that, and gotten kidnapped about mid-November. From there she'd been part of Nightshade's circus for almost eight months, then about a month in Rio for the trial. They'd been home since August and here it was almost October.  Amazing.

The gates of the shooting range stood open and they passed inside to find bedlam. Cars and trucks of every shape and description stood bumper to bumper as people circled the full parking lot. Crowds surged and ebbed from the parking lot to the range and back again, as people talked and jostled into position for the ticket booths.

"This is nuts!" Taryn cried, aghast. "We'll never get through this."

"I think we will." Sylvie looked grim and uncomfortable suddenly. "They're bound to notice us any minute now."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Taryn asked as they drew closer to the entrance booth.

Sylvie opened her mouth but a voice bellowed out from the crowd: "It's Sure-Shot!"

At once, the crowd fell silent bare heartbeats before breaking into wild cheering and shouting. The crowd parted instantly to let them pass, looking excited and eager. Not what Taryn would have expected.
"Umm, shouldn't we wait our turn in the back of the line?" she asked nervously.

"Of course not!" boomed a voice. Its owner was a big burly fellow that Taryn remembered vaguely from the time Sylvie and her dad had taken her to plink with his friend's .22 rifle.

"Hello Sylvie, Taryn." Alfred said as he stopped short of them.

"Hello Alfred." Sylvie said warmly.

"Hi Alfred. Glad you remembered me." Taryn shook his hand.

"Nah, don't be. I've always had a good memory for faces." Alfred said sunnily. "Come to my place for fun?"

"We don't want to be a bother." Taryn said politely. "We can wait our turn."

Alfred snorted. "Most of these folks are here to see Sylvie. You being here just makes it that much better, in their minds. They'd wait all day to see you, and probably longer. They won't mind much if we get you in, and we can start clearing out some of the other shi-uh, folk that are hanging around inside and not doing anything." He sounded annoyed, Taryn thought. "Almost no one is here to actually shoot, except as an excuse or a hope to get a lesson. Don't worry," he added at Sylvie's despairing look. "I've canceled them, despite what these knuckleheads think." He scowled fiercely at a group of teen boys in camouflage hunting gear who were staring hard at them. Taryn began to feel a little self-conscious under their gaze.

"Sorry for the fuss." Sylvie muttered as they followed him into the range and past the crowd.

"Sorry, for what? Sylvie, you've quadrupled my business alone since you started shooting here regularly, and boomed business in town. They're selling t-shirts of you two, for God's sake!" he shook his head. "Sylvie, you and Taryn are heroes to this damn town, and that's a fact!"

Taryn blushed heavily under the praise, though not as badly as Sylvie, she hoped. Alfred's praise hadn't been overly quiet, and now other people were starting to cheer and chant their names.

To try and get away, they went to the ammo counter and started to stand in line, but almost immediately it vanished in front of them like smoke. Everyone seemed to be caught in a mad scramble to get the best seats to view the range; the high school bleachers were right there as well, Taryn noticed, and already packed to overflowing.

Sylvie quietly grabbed two bricks of ammo and took them to the range. Taryn followed close on her heels, clutching her war spear tightly. This was so far out of her experience and comfort, she regretted instantly agreeing to this plan. She wondered how Sylvie could stand it... but then she looked at her face and thought she understood.

Sylvie's face had gone blank, calm. Her eyes calmly surveyed the range and the plywood target set up down it. She easily and quickly went over her rifle, the ammo, the stall, everything. Expertly she loaded the magazine and waited a moment. Her rifle came up and the crowd hushed as they leaned forward in excitement.

In five minutes their wait had been well worth it. Sylvie had put seventy rounds downrange in a phenomenal display of marksmanship and speed-shooting. Not a single round had missed its target, as the silent plywood target attested too, a large hole in the ten-spot followed by a trench where her ricochet shot had gone in.

Stepping out of the booth, Sylvie held the barrel pointed at the ground at an angle so the barrel could cool.

As the crowd cheered, Taryn leaned in.

"Great work Sylvie!"

"Thanks! That was great. I can see some room for improvement though. Maybe a couple of other things will hit me as I clean up."

"Well, while you're doing that, perhaps I can take a turn. Let me check. Alfred!" she shouted, even though the man stood barely five feet away. He turned to her with a puzzled look, wondering if he'd heard her at all.

"Alfred", she said, stepping closer.  "Mind if I take a shot with my spear?"

"Sure." Alfred said after a moment's hesitation, his gaze immediately swinging down the line for the range. "No one's there now. You can do your thing right now, if you don't dawdle."

Dawdle, she sniffed. She'd show him, dawdle!

Stepping around the stalls, she sized up the distance to a set of three targets spaced at twenty-five, fifty and a hundred yards away. The first two didn't strike her as challenging enough, so she settled for the furthest one. Swapping her grip to a throwing one, she stepped backwards a little to give herself some room. Abruptly the feeling of being back in the ring came to her and with a fierce war cry she launched the spear with a mighty heave!

The crowd fell silent at the strange shriek, their eyes darting to the spear that left her hand and flew through space for long, long seconds before striking the target dead center in the ten spot, deep enough for the head to cut cleanly through and the shaft to follow almost down to its end.

Taryn waited a moment, surveying the field to make sure no one else was stepping up to the range, then trotted out to retrieve her spear. Its head had sunk a little into the ground, but she pulled it out easily and trotted back, her hands moving the spear through several defensive forms so rapidly it blurred.

It amazed her how easy it was, slipping back to the basic drills and forms so perfectly. Halls had spent twelve hours a day or more for months drilling them into her and praising how quickly she'd learned what she claimed took others years to master.

The spear hummed as she thought, cutting through the breeze. Was Halls right? She never thought any of the forms particularly hard, it had been making her hands do the unfamiliar tasks that made her mess up, but time under the whip and long hours had quickly fixed that to where it had become almost second nature to her. There were more forms of spear fighting, she was aware, but she'd never attempted them. Perhaps she should, if just to keep in practice. Besides, though she wouldn't admit it, it was fun.

Coming at last to the end of the field, she regretfully left off the horseplay. She stared around the silent gun range, only now becoming aware that it had remained tomb-like in the entire time it had taken her to retrieve her spear.

"What?" she asked stupidly.

"Nothing." Sylvie stood grinning at her, her rifle put back in its sheath.

"Nothin?" Taryn smirked. She pointed. "Does the yard full of statues qualify as 'Nothing?'"

"Ha! I guess you're right. They've never seen a girl wave a stick around before, obviously"

"Hmmph! I guess that must be it." She giggled. The tension she'd been feeling fell away, letting her relax and enjoy herself a bit more. The silence was starting to get on her nerves though.

"Right! Seriously though, that was some pretty fancy spear waving." Sylvie said as they made their way through the crowd.
"Thanks!" Taryn laughed. The crowd still hadn't moved and she became a little irritated. What, she wasn't strong enough to chuck a spear so far? She couldn't be good at something? Perhaps she should come here more often, just to make them eat their words.

"You're going to need those skills later." Sylvie's voice had lost most of its banter, but Taryn stared at the crowd and didn't notice. "Danger is coming, and just between you and me, your mom is going to be right in the middle of it."

What she'd been saying finally registered and Taryn suppressed a sigh. And it had seemed like such a good idea to get her friend's mind off the nightmare, too. She gazed about the crowd, frowning, realizing that none of them had moved an inch since she'd thrown.

"I'm being very serious, Miss Grogan."

The unexpected, familiar voice sent her jumping ahead a full foot, her heart hammering in her throat and sweat breaking out on her brow. Raw terror threatened to overwhelm her for just a moment, until it washed away like water over a duck's back. She gripped her spear and turned to face her tormentor.

Nightshade stood casually where Sylvie had been, immaculately dressed in black with a cane he leaned casually against, his dark eyes seeming to absorb all light around them.

"Well, I'm surprised to see you, especially since you're in Jail." Taryn snarled.

"My body is, perhaps. Though, as I told you, I keep several outs wherever I go. But I will admit defeat in our last encounter. Enjoy your property, by the way. It should be arriving soon. But I digress. I'm here, now, to tell you that peril will befall you and your family. You can't run, nor can you hide. Only through fighting will you be able to stand even the slightest chance of protecting the one you love most. It is your destiny, Taryn, though that is such a clichéd term. It is true, there is no getting away from it, no running from it. The moment you put on that costume, you were forced onto this path. Meeting me, having Halls train you, all of it leading up to this one moment, this one chance. If you fall, then your mother will die, your town will die, and everyone you know will fall to evil."

"Bold words." Taryn snapped. "But I don't think so. You come this way again, I'll kill you."

"But Taryn, I'm not the one you should be looking out for." Nightshade smiled.

#

Taryn woke abruptly, feeling her body being shaken side to side roughly. Disoriented, dazed and not sure what was going on, she struggled to get to grips with what was happening. Had she been dreaming? It'd felt so real, and there was Nightshade...Nightshade!

Taryn leapt to her feet, throwing off the hands that'd been trying to rouse her. Her blood pumped strongly through her veins as she turned sharply to deal with the intruder. No one would take her and Sylvie back!

Sylvie put her hands up as she stepped back. "Whoa! Easy there Tar. I'm just telling you it's time to get up." Sylvie said. She looked a lot better, Taryn noted absently. The expected scars were gone from her hide and there weren't any dark bags under her eyes like last night...she must have gotten a good night's sleep, she thought grumpily.

"Morning Sylvie. Your nightmares are starting to become mine." She grumped.

"WHAT?!" Sylvie gasped.

"Your silly talk of Nightshade and warning caught me last night, except we were coming back from the range and you turned into Nightshade." Taryn said.

At the disbelieving look on her face, Taryn sighed and explained the dream in full. When she finished, she felt a lot better about things. In a teasing tone, she said, "So after we get our hooves done today, how about we stay home and watch soaps, and go to the range together tomorrow, huh? At least that way I'll get a chance to see more of them with mom."

"Sure." Sylvie said distractedly. She was thinking hard, Taryn thought, and no wonder.

"Syl, relax. It was just a bad dream, brought about by your story last night and thinking over-hard about that spy. Throw in the visit by Agent Bengal and your warnings about Wolfe and no wonder I had it. It's amazing either of us got any sleep last night, so let's just forget about it and try and concentrate on happier stuff today, okay?"

"Sure, happier stuff." Sylvie shrugged. "Why not?"